This invention relates to meat roll or meat log cutting machines for slicing long rolls or logs of soft compressed meats into shorter rolls or chunks.
Rolls or logs of soft meats such as sausage and cold cuts often are prepared in 3-4 foot lengths encased in a protective skin. In packaging this type of meat for retail sale, the rolls are cut or sliced by the processor into shorter rolls or chunks prior to shipment to the retailer.
Devices have been developed to do this kind of slicing automatically and save the expense of doing it manually. Most of these devices employ a plurality of rotating circular blades spaced across a conveyor. Rotating blades, however, do not cleanly slice the meat. Instead, the meat tends to be squashed or smeared against the blades as it is fed by feeding means into the blades. To minimize squashing, the meat must be fed slowly into the blades, but this reduces the speed of the cutting process. Finally, rotating blade machines are quite complicated, requiring motors, bearings and the like to drive and support the blades. Examples of such machines are disclosed in Gabel, U.S. Pat. No. 4,041,822, dated Aug. 16, 1977.
Other types of fixed blade slicing machines have been developed. One such type as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,383,459 to Peters, dated May 17, 1983, employs a reciprocating mechanism which causes the large roll and a plurality of spaced, straight-edged blades to be forced against each other to impart a slicing motion. Whether the blades are moved toward the meat or vice versa, the meat tends to be squeezed in such machines, particularly when the blades are dull since they will not slice through the protective skin very well causing the meat to be squeezed between the blades and the device carrying the meat. Finally, the reciprocating movement of such machines is quite slow and this device lacks simple, automatic feeding means to feed the rolls of meat into the machine. As a result of the inadequacy of these machines, a substantial portion of meat logs are cut manually creating a danger of injury and other indesirable problems.